When the primary bullet whizzed previous Sheikh Nasir Ahmad’s ear, he brushed at it, considering it was a mosquito, out on an unseasonably cool August night time within the central Pakistani city of Lalamusa.
Earlier than he was capable of react, nevertheless, two gunmen on a bike pulled up alongside him and shot him 4 occasions, hitting his proper leg, decrease again and the appropriate arm he used to attempt to defend himself from the hail of bullets.
“You don’t really feel something at the moment [when you are shot],” Ahmad informed Al Jazeera. “[The bullet] is scorching because it leaves the barrel, so it’s when the blood begins that you simply realise that one thing has hit you.”
Safety digicam footage of the assault reveals Ahmad falling to the bottom because the gunmen pace away. He cried out for assist, he says, however nobody got here.
“My garments have been fully lined in blood. The blood was soaked via my trousers.”
The bullet wounds from the assault on Sheikh Nasir Ahmad have begun to heal, however he says he might by no means be capable of return dwelling for worry of his life [Al Jazeera]Ahmad is a member of Pakistan’s 500,000-strong Ahmaddiya neighborhood, a spiritual minority that considers itself Muslim however is barred from referring to themselves as such, and from practising elements of their religion beneath Pakistan’s strict blasphemy legal guidelines.
Police say Ahmad was focused attributable to his religion, one among a spate of violent assaults concentrating on the Ahmadis, their locations of worship and even their graves in Pakistan in 2020.
The final 12 months has seen a spike in violent assaults towards Ahmadis, and a tenfold enhance in blasphemy circumstances lodged towards them.
Group members and rights teams say the spike has been fuelled by the rise of the far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) spiritual group, and the efforts of a single spiritual scholar within the japanese metropolis of Lahore, Hassan Muawiya.
“There was a rise in these [attacks], in [legal] circumstances,” says Amir Mahmood, spokesman for the Ahmadi neighborhood. “This [persecution] has elevated within the final two or three years, and it’s persevering with to take action.”
‘He did this simply to save lots of us’
In 2020, at the least 5 Ahmadis have been killed in focused assaults by gunmen throughout Pakistan, whereas at the least seven others have been wounded in unsuccessful assaults, in response to neighborhood information.
Since 2017, at the least 13 Ahmadis have been killed, and greater than 40 wounded, in response to the info.
The Ahmadi neighborhood’s ‘Wall of martyrs’, exhibiting photos of all Ahmadis which have been killed for his or her religion in Pakistan since 1947 [Al Jazeera]5 months earlier than the assault on Sheikh Nasir Ahmad in Lalamusa, the TLP held a spiritual gathering attended by tons of in a park about 100 metres from his dwelling.
The night time of that gathering, Ahmad says, his household hid of their dwelling and alerted neighborhood leaders that “something might occur”, as TLP supporters raised slogans calling for “blasphemers” to be put to demise.
After the gathering, TLP exercise in his small city of roughly 100,000 individuals elevated, he mentioned, with a relentless risk to different Ahmadi inhabitants, and most of the common clients at his plastic furnishings retailer refusing to do enterprise with him.
Ahmad survived the try on his life, however others haven’t been as lucky.
In November 2020, a younger man tried to barge his method into an Ahmadi place of worship within the city of Marh Balochan, about 90km (56 miles) west of Lahore.
He blindly fired a pistol via the door, earlier than a 31-year-old Ahmadi man, Tahir Mahmood, confronted him and pushed him outdoors. Tahir was hit by a bullet in his stomach and he tried to run down the road, scaring the attacker away.
“As Tahir acquired about 30 or 40 toes away, the attacker was behind him. So I shouted saying ‘Tahir, save your self, he’s behind you!’,” says Tariq Mahmood, 55, Tahir’s father, who was additionally wounded within the assault.
Listening to the daddy shout, the attacker turned and fired a single shot at Tariq’s brow, knocking him down. He then caught as much as Tahir and shot him lifeless.
“He did this simply to save lots of us,” says Tariq, his physique heaving as he weeps, of his son’s try and distract the attacker.
A month earlier than the assault on the Mahmoods, there had been a big TLP gathering of their neighbourhood, they are saying.
“There’s a [yearly] convention in October, it’s after that that persons are extra energised [against us],” says Shamim Akhtar, 54, Tahir Mahmood’s mom.
“They go from home to accommodate telling individuals to not go to our retailer or take something from us. They extract guarantees from individuals, they make individuals elevate their palms within the mosque to vow to not go to our retailer.”
‘An environment of dread’
Initially based within the mid-2010s because the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYRA), the TLP rose to nationwide prominence in 2017 when it held a three-week protest sit-in blocking a main highway within the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, over a minor change in an electoral oath that the group thought-about to loosen restrictions towards Ahmadis.
The group, based by hardline spiritual scholar Khadim Hussain Rizvi, succeeded in getting the federal government to backtrack on the electoral oath change, forcing the resignation of the federal legislation minister.
Since then, the TLP has held a collection of profitable countrywide anti-government protests, a few of them violent, on the difficulty of blasphemy, and received greater than 2.2 million votes in a 2018 basic election.
The rise in prominence of the TLP, rights teams and researchers say, has a direct correlation with a rise in violent assaults, authorized circumstances and hate speech towards Ahmadis, who’re explicitly thought-about “apostates” by the group.
“Non secular freedom has been imperilled in Pakistan for years, however the rise of the TLP sends a transparent sign to minority communities that they continue to be susceptible to discrimination, harassment and even violence,” says Dinushika Dissanayake, deputy South Asia director at Amnesty Worldwide.
“It creates an environment of dread, encouraging self-censorship, making it inconceivable to observe spiritual rituals with out incurring a big danger.”
Rabia Mahmood, an unbiased human rights researcher who works on the persecution of Pakistani minorities, says the TLP makes use of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy legal guidelines – which prescribe a compulsory demise sentence for the offence of insulting Prophet Muhammad, and jail phrases for Ahmadis who “pose as a Muslim” – to justify their acts of persecution.
“TLP has used the blasphemy legislation as a key software of justifying its existence, and accused minorities of insult to Islam, raised hell in neighbourhoods for arrest of blasphemy accused and ensured circumstances have been registered towards suspects on account of their witch-hunts,” she says.
Furthermore, Mahmood says, assaults towards Ahmadis are sometimes preceded by elevated TLP exercise within the space, or with specific hate speech campaigns.
“The violent assaults on Ahmadis, their properties and [places of worship], present a sample of pre-attack smear campaigns towards members of the neighborhood in a particular locality,” she says.
“At occasions, the marketing campaign is towards the neighborhood usually, and typically particular to a person or a gaggle of residents of a locality.”
In at the least 4 circumstances of assaults on Ahmadis within the final 12 months reviewed by Al Jazeera, there have been elevated gatherings by the TLP and its associates within the space within the months resulting in the assault, and in a single case the sufferer, Naeemullah Khattak, was explicitly the goal of a hate speech marketing campaign.
In April this 12 months, following a collection of violent countrywide protests by the TLP on the difficulty of “blasphemy” that noticed the group abduct a number of cops within the japanese metropolis of Lahore, Pakistan’s authorities banned it as a “terrorist” organisation.
Whereas the ban stays in place, media reviews point out the group is constant to function freely in lots of areas.
Pir Ijaz Ashrafi, a distinguished Muslim scholar who refers to himself because the “former” central data secretary of the TLP for the reason that ban was imposed, blames the violence on “people”, not an organised TLP coverage.
“Pakistan has a structure and legal guidelines, and the structure and legal guidelines don’t give permission for [Ahmadis] to current themselves as Muslims,” he informed Al Jazeera at a small mosque in Lahore.
“[T]right here isn’t any different place on this: the denier of the finality of Prophethood is an apostate, and concerning an apostate Islamic legislation is obvious that there’s a obligation to kill [them].”
The ‘blasphemy’ campaigner
Much more precipitous than the rise in violence has been a rise in blasphemy circumstances towards members of the Ahmadi neighborhood in Pakistan in 2020.
Final 12 months, at the least 30 blasphemy circumstances and 71 different authorized circumstances associated to faith have been lodged towards members of the Ahmadi neighborhood, in response to neighborhood information, representing a tenfold and sixfold enhance respectively from the 12 months earlier than.
The rise in authorized circumstances is fuelled, rights activists and neighborhood members say, by one man: Hassan Muawiya.
Hassan Muawiya, 34, is a spiritual cleric who has pursued dozens of blasphemy circumstances towards members of the Ahmadi neighborhood in Pakistan [Al Jazeera]Muawiya, 34, is a spiritual chief within the japanese metropolis of Lahore, the nation’s second-largest metropolis, and works intently with the Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Legal professionals Discussion board to pursue circumstances of alleged blasphemy, significantly towards members of the Ahmadi neighborhood.
Muawiya’s elder brother, Tahir Ashrafi, is a distinguished spiritual scholar who was appointed by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan as his particular consultant on spiritual concord in October 2020. Muawiya says his work is “not associated” to that of his brother, who can be recognized for his sturdy anti-Ahmadi stance.
“Hassan Muawiya, undoubtedly, is Pakistan’s ‘main’ anti-Ahmadi campaigner,” says Mahmood, the researcher. “He started essentially the most coordinated well-thought-out offline marketing campaign towards this neighborhood, beneath the bigger ambit of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Council.
“His techniques use the prevailing institutional and authorized discrimination towards Ahmadis to focus on the neighborhood via circumstances on fabricated prices.”
Sitting on a wicker-backed chair within the dappled daylight of the grounds of the district courts in Lahore, Muawiya insists he’s solely following the letter of the legislation, and accuses members of the Ahmadi neighborhood of flouting these legal guidelines.
“If any [Ahmadi] or member of any faith stays inside their limits, we now have no subject with them,” says Sajid Ishari, Muawiya’s lawyer. “However once you reduce my nostril, then you’ll be able to count on me to chop your nostril as properly.”
A board for the ‘Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Legal professionals Discussion board’, a gaggle of attorneys Muawiya is related to and who pursue ‘blasphemy’ circumstances throughout Pakistan [Al Jazeera]Muawiya informed Al Jazeera that he had been suggested by the courts to talk via his lawyer, as he was the complainant or a witness in plenty of ongoing blasphemy circumstances.
Since 2012, Muawiya has been the complainant in at the least eight blasphemy circumstances and related as a witness or adviser with at the least eight others, in response to information reviewed by Al Jazeera. Rights activists say the precise variety of circumstances through which Muawiya is related to the complainant however doesn’t seem on paperwork is way larger.
Defence attorneys allege that Muawiya and his group of attorneys use intimidation techniques, and the sensitivity of the difficulty of blasphemy in Pakistan, to “strain” judges.
“Within the courtroom, usually [the complainants and their lawyers] have tried to misbehave with me,” mentioned Ali Khan*, a lawyer representing a number of Ahmadis accused of blasphemy by Muawiya’s group of attorneys in Lahore.
“They communicate loudly, in an try and scare [people] or intimidate, there have been a number of incidents of this. The silence of judges is principally in help of [the complainants’ behaviour].”
Al Jazeera attended hearings for 4 blasphemy circumstances at Lahore’s classes courtroom and excessive courtroom in July. Hearings in three circumstances weren’t held regardless of being on the schedule.
The fourth listening to noticed a tense alternate between the complainant’s lawyer and the choose, which noticed the defence lawyer accuse the choose of “taking dictation” from the complainants, and the complainant’s lawyer proclaim: “If I had the facility … none of those individuals [gesturing to the defence] would survive!”
The choose remained silent, after which granted the complainant’s request for an early subsequent listening to, regardless of the defence’s objections that it had not but been supplied copies of the proof towards the accused.
Khan mentioned such a observe was “frequent”, and that judges have been usually beneath strain to ship responsible verdicts or face violence themselves.
Naeemullah Khattak, 57, a professor of Zoology, was shot lifeless within the northwestern metropolis of Peshawar after months of a sustained and focused hate speech marketing campaign led by a TLP-affiliate [Al Jazeera]Since 1990, at the least 79 individuals have been murdered within the identify of the blasphemy legal guidelines, in response to an Al Jazeera tally. These killed embody individuals accused of blasphemy, their members of the family, their attorneys and judges who’ve delivered “not responsible” verdicts.
“General, the ambiance has turn into a lot worse. You have got given them free rein, and despatched a message that on the identify of [blasphemy], you are able to do something. Nobody will say something to you,” says Khan.
Ahmadis have seen “blasphemy” circumstances registered towards them for possessing copies of Islam’s holy e book, the Quran, for writing Prophet Muhammad’s identify on a marriage invitation, and for uttering the Muslim phrases of religion whereas of their place of worship.
Muawiya says the elevated violence is a results of judges coming beneath “overseas strain” to ship acquittals in high-profile blasphemy circumstances.
“[The acquittals] are a query mark on the judiciary, and there’s no discussion board after that,” his lawyer mentioned. “Younger individuals will cease believing within the justice system after which what’s going to they do?”
Muawiya denied allegations that his group of attorneys or he personally intimidated judges or sought to prosecute Ahmadis with out “totally researching” to ascertain the veracity of the case.
Requires justice
For individuals who have been attacked within the identify of their religion, the cry seems to be comparable: for prosecution and conviction of these accountable.
Tariq Mahmood, whose son was killed in Marh Balochan, says his household might by no means be capable of return dwelling once more.
“Till we don’t get justice and equality, and if a convict will get full punishment, that’s when somebody who needs to commit a homicide [of an Ahmadi] will know that they are going to be hanged,” he says.
“However there isn’t a such factor right here. So many Ahmadis have been killed, and nobody has been punished.”
Sheikh Nasir Ahmad, a shopkeeper from Lalamusa who survived the assault on him, says the federal government must take stronger motion towards teams just like the TLP that interact in hate speech and assaults, or face an enlargement of violent assaults.
“There’s saying in Punjabi that once you’re grinding the wheat, the [other products] additionally find yourself within the flour typically.
“So someday, everybody can be in the course of this.”
*Some names have been modified to guard the identities of these quoted, at their request, attributable to safety issues.
